A day in the life of a Denver food truck

We go inside J Street Foods on a busy summer day

The J Street food truck spice rack at the Denver Commissary where the team preps their food before hitting the streets with their Caribbean Flavors menu this month. The chef and co-owner Jason Bray and his wife and co-owner Amy Crowfoot change their menu monthly. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

The food truck has become a warm weather staple. Each spring and summer we ditch the stuffy restaurants for lunch and we opt for the open air food truck circuses. You go for the gyro while Bill grabs a slice and Judy an ice cream; it’s a world of choices — maybe too many. As the Denver food truck scene grows, we wanted to take a look at exactly what it takes to run one.

Join us as we ride along with J Street Food Truck for a day in the life.

8:25 a.m.

I’m a touch early to meet Jason Bray and Amy Crowfoot, owners of the J Street Food Truck, which is good since all I see is a generic office building where the commissary kitchen they share with other food trucks and caterers is supposed to be. Oh wait — that generic office building is the commissary kitchen.

I pull around back to see that the building grows and grows and somehow camouflages a whole fleet of food trucks. It’s kind of like a clown car where they just keep coming out, except with chefs and trucks and pounds of raw animal flesh instead of terrifying clowns.

Bray has been here since 6 a.m., chopping vegetables, braising ribs, mixing up sauces, doing dishes and loading the truck for a 9:30 a.m. roll-out time. He’s already been shopping, too. Bray is the chef behind J Street, which sells globally and seasonally inspired street food with a menu that changes every month. His wife, Crowfoot, who runs the business side of things, is on her way.

Before starting the truck in February 2016, Bray was the executive chef at the Sheridan Denver West Hotel for eight years. He wanted to make his own food, and a truck was a less risky way to do that. The couple traded $3,500 for the shell of an old Oroweat bread truck they found on Craigslist, and they were on their way.

“It’s not gonna ruin your life if it doesn’t work out. Not like a restaurant and you lose half a million,” Bray said.

Because their menu constantly shifts, they needed a truck equipped to cook up a variety of dishes. That meant cramming a six-burner stove, a flattop, a Salamander broiler, a steam table, an oven, a griddle, two coolers and a freezer into the back of that old Oroweat truck. Today it also means cramming Crowfoot, who just arrived, and J Street’s cooks, Josh Ronnfeldt and Justin Hales, into the truck. (Bray will stay behind to work on August’s menu.) Oh, and me.

The J Street food truck spice rack at the Denver Commissary where the team preps their food before hitting the streets with their Caribbean Flavors menu this month. The chef and co-owner Jason Bray and his wife and co-owner Amy Crowfoot change their menu monthly. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

9:40 a.m.

Crowfoot drives the truck to DTC Eats. (No, you don’t need a special driver’s license to operate this monstrous vehicle; I asked.) I’m riding shotgun in the passenger seat that doesn’t have a door. An uninsured driver knocked it off last year, and they haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Ronnfeldt and Hales are balancing on coolers in the back, checking their phones for the quickest route to the meet-up.

For this truck gathering, as well as for the popular Civic Center Eats, trucks pay to be there. For the breweries (“Everyone wants all the Golden breweries! They do really well,” Crowfoot tells me) and private events, the trucks don’t have to pay to sell their food, but, depending on the city, they may need to purchase special permits to legally sell there.

#knowCOwinter

We arrive in the parking lot for DTC Eats; seven trucks are already here. It’s first come, first serve for a spot, and in a parallel parking-ish maneuver, we pull up behind the Tony Guacamole truck.

The J Street crew turns on the generator, then all the equipment it powers. They like to give themselves at least a half hour to get everything powered up, untie and unwrap everything that had been locked in for the drive, refresh the dry erase board menu and pull out everything they need for the day.

While the J Street crew is putting everything in its place for lunch service, the Chibby Wibbitz truck rolls in and — whoops! — backs into Tony Guacamole’s service window. The guys come out, assess the damage (not much) and then shake hands and smile. Food trucks trade food and crew members, and they know that what’s good for one is good for all.

When your office is a truck, where’s the bathroom? Crowfoot directs me to a nearby office building. Crisis averted.

10:56 a.m.

The first diners come in. Brian Fieser and Lori Marra made the full loop through the trucks and circled back to order. Marra orders the Watermelon Tomato Salad based on Crowfoot’s recommendation, and Fieser chooses the Mojo Ribs with Cuban Brussels Sprouts. Later, they return to tell me the food was great.

12:15 p.m.

During peak time, there’s almost a choreographed dance to how the trio maneuvers the tiny kitchen. There’s side-stepping, surprisingly elegant turns and suave slides performed to get that salad assembled, the cheese melted, the Brussels seasoned. Ronnfeldt is on one side, Hales on the other. Crowfoot is in the middle, working the window. But when Hales needs the fryer — positioned directly behind Crowfoot — and Ronnfeldt is on the grill getting five Cubano sandwiches meated up, things get tight. (I’m still tucked into the passenger seat.)

The men especially are in constant motion, bopping along to what could be music, but is really just the sound of sliced potatoes meeting bubbling oil and fans spinning the hot, sticky air. (The air temperature above the grill can get up to a blistering 150 degrees.)

The smell from the fryer and the caramelization of the Brussels sprouts makes that hot, sticky air smell greasy and sweet, so you almost – almost – forget how damn hot it is.

Outside the truck, people are standing about everywhere, waiting on food. Many take the food to go, headed back inside to their air-conditioned offices.

Rodrigo Ribeiro is caught offguard asking if the Cuban Brussel’s are good at the J Street Food Truck when co-owner and driver Amy Crowfoot replied “their terrible” during his lunch hour at DTC EATS Food Truck Monday on Syracuse St in Denver. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

1:55 p.m.

At least one truck has already pulled away and many have closed up their windows. Crowfoot takes the money envelope to the radio station that puts on the event. Entercom Communications takes 10 percent of the day’s sales as the cost of parking and cooking for DTCers.

“Today was a good day; today was busy,” Crowfoot said. “In winter we work twice as hard for half as much money. We’re literally trying to make as much money as we can now.”

Ronnfeldt and Hales finish cleaning up and turn off the generator. They put away the two fans that fought the losing battle of keeping the temperature bearable.

2:12 p.m.

We pull out. On the drive back we talk about our favorite non-mobile restaurants. Like all of us, Crowfoot finds it hard to keep up with all the new openings. I ask her if she thinks the food truck market is as crowded as the brick-and-mortar scene seems to be these days.

“I think the market is overly saturated in Denver,” she said. “It used to be a novelty, but now you can go to any brewery on any day and find a food truck, so that novelty has worn off. All of us have to work harder to differentiate ourselves from the crowd.”

2:45 p.m.

We’re back at the commissary. Some trucks let a crew member off at the gate to race in and claim the sink for dishwashing. Everyone in this truck is too tired to race anywhere.

Crowfoot pulls into J Street’s designated parking spot, and Ronnfeldt and Hales jump out to load up a cart with leftovers and dirty dishes.

3:30 p.m.

Everything is packed and cleaned — nine and a half hours of work for less than two hours of real sales time.

I get into my own fully-doored vehicle and drive back around the clown car of a commissary kitchen. Working the food truck was sort of like that circus-act illusion — there’s so much more to it than meets the eye.

Allyson Reedy is first and foremost an eater. While her affinity for food was detrimental to her dreams of modeling swimwear, it helps her tremendously when writing about local restaurants for the Denver Post.